The Cost of Being a Religious Minority in Oaxaca Carlos Martinez Garcia - La Jornada
go to original September 9, 2013

In the indigenous communities of the country, the building of diversity advances in various fields. The populations of the original peoples are the main actors of this process. In the majority of cases, the communities have found ways of assimilating cultural changes, at the same time preserving certain identifying elements, and/or adapting to the acquisition of previously foreign behaviors.

One aspect of diversity actually existing among indigenous people of the country is the plurality of religious beliefs. In contrast to the more or less generalized belief that among indigenous people of Mexico, there exists a certain monolithic religion mixing Roman Catholicism with pre-Hispanic religious expressions and rejecting other beliefs, the fact is that since the beginning of the last third of the 19th century, in several parts of the country, evangelical Christianity has been well-received by a portion of the indigenous population.

Of the many cases we could cite regarding the above statement, I will mention only two documented by Ignacio Manuel Altamirano in 1870. The enthusiastic adoption of Protestantism by indigenous Xalostoc and Chimalhuacán people caught his attention. When they were harassed, persecuted and jailed for having chosen this belief, Altamirano decidedly defended the indigenous Protestants and argued in favor of the reform laws of the era of Benito Juarez which protected their freedom to choose one or another religious belief.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Rachel Alexander

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